Booz2go

[Grumpmeister]

Well brilliant, underage drinking is a massive problem and what to Dutch students come up with? Powdered bleedin alcohol that can apparently be sold legally to minors.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros (70 pence-1 pound).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-coloured and -flavoured drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

"We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks," 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

Van Elderen and four classmates at Helicon Vocational Institute, about an hour's drive from Amsterdam, came up with the idea as part of their final-year project.

"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

In Germany, alcopops -- sweet drinks containing alcohol and in powder form -- caused quite a stir when launched on to the market. Alcohol powder, classified as a flavouring, was sold in the United States three years ago.

The students said companies interested in making the product commercially could avoid taxes because the alcohol was in powder form. A number of companies are interested, they said.

So not only are you targetting the underage drinking market with this stuff you are aiming to make a killing on the VAT front as well. Good to see responsibility at work here.

[Snoopy]

Give them some credit ~ when I was that age I was too busy getting pissed to try to come up with anything other than 

[Grumpmeister]

True, but its the fact that this is being pitched to the major drinks companies who appear to be interested in the product as it bypasses minimum age laws that winds me up.

[Barman]

Sooner or later some bright spark will die of an overdose having sniffed it up an empty Bic biro ? then it?ll be banned?   

[TG]

? then it?ll be banned?   

That will make it seriously popular.

[Nick]

Can we send some to Cherie.

Have to go

[Barman]

? then it?ll be banned?   

That will make it seriously popular.

Exactly ? I?ve just ordered 10,000 Bic biros.